Does applying to Harvard under the SCEA program have any sort of tangible benefit? I know the website states that it doesn’t.
I will be applying under engineering, and I know many competitive engineering applicants apply to MIT/Caltech early and Harvard regular. In this regard, would applying to Harvard SCEA as engineering increase one’s chances?
All students apply to Harvard College as Liberal Arts Majors and choose a major, called a concentration, during their sophomore year. That’s true for students interested in Harvard’s engineering program as well.
Harvard DOES NOT recruit by student “interest” as more than 60% of all college student’s switch their major during their 4 years of school. As it’s impossible for the Admissions Office to predict which student’s will stay with their declared interest and which will change – Admissions cannot use what a student writes down as their “intended major” or “interest” as a recruiting tool.
Harvard (and SYP) ask about your “intended major” to see how committed you are to your interests – the idea being that your commitment, energy and drive is a transferrable skill. So whatever student’s write down as their “intended major” they should make sure they have documented evidence in the rest of their application of their commitment to that major.
If you really want Harvard, and have a very competitive application, meaning a 95+ unweighted GPA, with high test scores (ACT of 34+, SAT of 1540+) with interesting EC’s and stellar recommendations then you SHOULD apply somewhere early in the SCEA round. Pick a school – Stanford, Harvard, Yale or Princeton – it doesn’t matter, whichever one is your favorite, as IMHO your chances are better in the SCEA round than in the RD round despite what Harvard’s website says. That’s because SCEA tends to benefit those upper end students – students who are in the top 1% to 2% of their graduating class. That’s not true for students who are in the top 3% to 10% of their graduating class, as Admissions tends to defer those applicants to compare them to a broader applicant pool. See: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2014/01/24/early-programs-not-created-equal/